Chromium-Based Browsers HW Acceleration

This guide outlines enabling hardware acceleration in Chromium-based browsers on CachyOS. This offloads video/graphics tasks to your GPU, improving performance.

Prerequisites

Required:

• Chromium-based Browser: (e.g., Chrome, Brave, Ungoogled Chromium, Edge)
• GPU Drivers/APIs: Up-to-date Mesa (AMD/Intel) or NVIDIA drivers, with Vulkan/VA-API/VDPAU configured.

Optional:

• amdgpu_top: Install amdgpu_top from the repository through package manager if you wish to monitor AMD GPU activity from the terminal.
• nvtop: (Intel GPU’s only) Install nvtop (Lunar Lake) and intel-gpu-tools (Pre-Lunar Lake) through the octopi package manager if you wish to monitor Intel GPU activity from the terminal.

Contribution

This guide is extensible. If you have a working hardware acceleration setup for a specific GPU and Chromium-based browser, contribute by adding a new section under “GPU & Browser Configurations.” Include:

• Browser Name
• GPU Model
• Flags: ~/.config/[browser]-flags.conf content.
• File Path: Full path to the flags file.
• Notes (Optional): Key drivers, packages, or setup specifics.

Setup Steps

1. Identify Flags File: Locate your browser’s flags file path in “GPU & Browser Configurations.”

2. Edit Flags File: Open/create the file using nano (or your preferred text editor like micro, vim).

   nano [PATH_TO_YOUR_BROWSER_FLAGS_FILE]
   # Example: nano ~/.config/chrome-flags.conf

3. Add Flags: Paste the relevant GPU/browser flags into the file.

4. Save & Close.

5. Restart Browser: Close all browser instances and relaunch.

6. Verify: Navigate to chrome://gpu (or brave://gpu, edge://gpu, etc.). Confirm “Hardware accelerated” status under “Video Acceleration Information” and “Graphics Feature Status.”

How to Verify Video Hardware Acceleration

AMD GPUs (amdgpu_top)

1. Open a terminal and run the command:

   amdgpu_top

2. Start playing a video in your browser (e.g., on YouTube).
3. Observe the media section in amdgpu_top. You should see some utilization here, indicating your GPU’s media engine is active. If it remains at 0% during video playback, hardware acceleration might not be fully engaged for decoding.

Intel GPUs (nvtop)

1. Open a terminal and run the command:

   sudo nvtop

2. Start playing a video in your browser (e.g., on YouTube).
3. Observe the ENC/DEC percentage in nvtop, the percentage should increase if video decoding is working in hardware.

Intel GPUs (intel_gpu_tools)

1. Open a terminal and run the command:

   sudo intel_gpu_top

   Note: Some newer Intel gpu’s such as Lunar Lake GPU’s no longer expose the gpu performance counters with intel_gpu_top, use nvtop for these systems

2. Start playing a video in your browser (e.g., on YouTube).

3. Observe the Video and VideoEnhance percentage in intel_gpu_top, the percentage should increase if video decoding is working in hardware.

Browser Developer Tools

1. Open your Chromium-based browser.

2. Start playing a video (e.g., on YouTube or a local file).

3. Open Developer Tools: Press F12 or Ctrl+Shift+I.

4. Navigate to the Media tab. If you don’t see it, click the three dots (...) or >> (More tabs) on the Developer Tools toolbar, then select Media.

5. In the “Players” section on the left, click on the entry corresponding to your video.

6. In the main panel, scroll down to the Video Decoder section.

7. Look for the Hardware decoder label. It should be true. If it says false or shows a software decoder name (e.g., FFmpegVideoDecoder, VpxVideoDecoder, Dav1dVideoDecoder), hardware acceleration is not active for that video.

GPU & Browser Configurations

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT (Google Chrome)

• Browser: Google Chrome

• GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

• Flags File: ~/.config/chrome-flags.conf

--use-gl=angle
--use-angle=vulkan
--enable-features=Vulkan,VulkanFromANGLE,DefaultANGLEVulkan,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxZeroCopyGL,AcceleratedVideoEncoder,VaapiIgnoreDriverChecks,UseMultiPlaneFormatForHardwareVideo
--ozone-platform-hint=x11

Notes: Leverages Vulkan (via ANGLE) and VA-API. --ozone-platform-hint=x11 can be useful even on Wayland for certain acceleration paths.

Nvidia RTX 4090 (Vivaldi)

• Browser: Vivaldi

• GPU: Nvidia RTX 4090

• Flags File: ~/.config/vivaldi-stable.conf

--enable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxGL,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxZeroCopyGL

• Flags File: /usr/share/applications/vivaldi-stable.desktop

# Keep all other lines the same
# You should only change this Exec= entry under the '[Desktop Entry]' section
Exec=/usr/bin/vivaldi-stable --enable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxGL,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxZeroCopyGL %U

Notes:

You should only need to apply one of these conf file changes, but doing so on both should not cause issues.

Alternatively you can do the following for KDE:

1. Delete any Task Manager / taskbar shortcuts for Vivaldi
2. Search for Vivaldi in the Application Launcher list
3. Right-click the entry in the Application Launcher and select Edit Application...
4. In the Command-line arguments section, add in the following arguments before the last argument %U:

--enable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxGL,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxZeroCopyGL

5. Launch Vivaldi and pin the process to your Task Manager / taskbar

AMD Radeon RX 550 (UnGoogled Chromium)

• Browser: UnGoogled Chromium

• GPU: AMD Radeon RX 550

• Flags File: ~/.config/chromium-flags.conf

--enable-wayland-ime
--ozone-platform=wayland
--enable-features=AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxGL,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxZeroCopyGL,AcceleratedVideoEncoder,WaylandSessionManagement,WaylandTextInputV3,WaylandUiScale,WaylandWindowDecorations

Notes:

If you’re using X11, use this:

--ozone-platform=x11
--enable-features=AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxGL,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxZeroCopyGL,AcceleratedVideoEncoder

Nvidia RTX 5070 TI (Brave)

• Browser: Brave

• GPU: Nvidia RTX 5070 TI

• Flags File: ~/.config/brave-flags.conf

--enable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxGL,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxZeroCopyGL,AcceleratedVideoEncoder,VaapiIgnoreDriverChecks

Notes:

• Video decoding and encoding showing as Hardware accelerated on brave://gpu.
• Sometimes inspecting the media tab on a YouTube video will show Hardware acceleration, sometimes not.

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Template to contribute

[Your Browser] - [Your GPU Model] (Contributed by [Your Name/Handle])

• Browser: [e.g., Brave, Ungoogled Chromium, Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi, Opera, Chromium]

• GPU: [e.g., NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080, Intel Iris Xe]

• Flags File Path: (Crucial, varies per browser!)

  • Common .conf paths:

    • Chromium: ~/.config/chromium-flags.conf

    • Brave Browser: ~/.config/brave-flags.conf

    • Ungoogled Chromium: ~/.config/ungoogled-chromium-flags.conf

  • .desktop file modification: Some browsers (Brave, Edge, Vivaldi, Opera) might require editing the Exec= line in their .desktop file (copy from /usr/share/applications/ to ~/.local/share/applications/ first).

Flags Content (for .conf file or Exec= line):

# Paste your flags here.
# For .desktop files, flags are space-separated after the executable.

Notes (Optional):

• Required drivers (e.g., nvidia-dkms, intel-media-driver).

• Specific setup considerations or .desktop file modification instructions.